Friday 27 April 2012 04.54 EDT
First published on Friday 27 April 2012 04.54 EDT

UK media buying group Aegis reported an 8.1% surge in organic revenue in the first quarter, as its American operations grew a fifth to balance Europe, which slowed to just 1.7% growth.

The performance is particularly impressive given that Aegis, which is on a high after winning the $3bn-a-year General Motors account in January, reported 10% growth in the same quarter last year.

Aegis beat city consensus forecasts, which had been expecting first quarter revenue growth of about 7.8%.

Aegis – which owns ad networks including Carat, Isobar and Vizeum – easily outperformed rivals including IPG, Omincom, WPP, Havas and Publicis Groupe, which have reported first quarter growth of between 2.8% and 5.1%.

The driver for growth was Aegis Media, the media buying operation within the group, in the Americas which grew by revenues by a fifth.

"Our performance in the region benefited from an outstanding new business record in North America over the last two years, as well as continued strong results from our market-leading digital business in Brazil," the company said.

Asia Pacific grew by 12.5%, thanks to an "excellent" performance in China.

In comparison, the Europe Middle East and Africa region grew by just 1.7%, although Aegis said this was because in the first quarter last year the region grew by close to double digits.

"There were good performances from our businesses in Russia and northern Europe, whilst southern Europe continued to face challenging market conditions," the company said.

Aegis said that it would continue to target acquisitions that provided scale, innovation and infill with a focus on the faster growing regions, North America and digital.

"Aegis ended the period in a robust financial position, comfortably within its financial covenants, with significant undrawn capacity under its committed central facilities," the company said.

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